Nice! 😀, ive been looking at the 8600gt tests, some years ago when i put together my dual core 775/nvidia 7950gt win98 system, i installed win 7 to try out a bunch of later DX9 titles.

i was comparing GPU's to see how the 7950gt stacks up against other nvidia gpus, i found the 8600gt is less powerful than a 7900gtx/7950gt, but the 8600gts is more powerful, i figured any games that require an 8600gt that are DX9 should run no problem on a 7900gtx/7950gt, two games i tried were tomb raider 2013 and max payne 3.

tomb raider i got between 40-50fps on the lowest settings, it was just about playable but it looked pretty bad, max payne 3 i was getting a lot of black blotches over the screen which im guessing was down to the fact this game requires a decent amount of VRAM, at first i thought my card was dying, frame rate was somewhere around 30 fps if i remember right.

i'd be interested to see how these games run on an 8600gt especially one with 256mb vram, and find out whether they run any better than a supposedly more powerful 7900gtx/7950gt with twice the VRAM.

StriderTR wrote on 2025-10-01, 02:20:

I actually enjoy reading reviews and tech blogs just as much, sometimes more, than watching videos. Great job by the way! Very u […]
Show full quote

I actually enjoy reading reviews and tech blogs just as much, sometimes more, than watching videos. Great job by the way! Very useful information for retro/classic gamers!

I, sort of, went down a similar path, except covering more of my own personal builds and projects than benchmarks. https://theclassicgeek.blogspot.com/

I would love to do more benchmarking, but sadly, time does not permit me to do so. I just do it for myself, like today, being thrilled I get a solid 75FPS in Quake Gold at 1024x768 on my Win98/GF4 Ti4200/Athlon XP3000. 🤣

Either way, good work, keep it up! 😀

Thanks, I can immediately tell how many hours you've poured into your site. I only skimmed Vogons tonight and it's already late here in the UK, but I’ll have a good read of some of your articles properly tomorrow.
It’s oddly comforting knowing there are others out there spending countless hours crafting blogs and writeups for niche audiences, I wonder how many more of us are quietly doing the same.
I’ll drop a backlink to your site from mine tomorrow, it seems to help a lot with visibility
Congrats on hitting 75fps! I’m wishing I had any GeForce 3 or 4 Ti at this point — they’re getting seriously pricey over here. My AGP collection’s looking is made up of cards that are either crap, or not working

Ash515253 wrote on 2025-10-02, 22:22:

Thanks, I can immediately tell how many hours you've poured into your site. I only skimmed Vogons tonight and it's already late […]
Show full quote

StriderTR wrote on 2025-10-01, 02:20:

I actually enjoy reading reviews and tech blogs just as much, sometimes more, than watching videos. Great job by the way! Very u […]
Show full quote

I actually enjoy reading reviews and tech blogs just as much, sometimes more, than watching videos. Great job by the way! Very useful information for retro/classic gamers!

I, sort of, went down a similar path, except covering more of my own personal builds and projects than benchmarks. https://theclassicgeek.blogspot.com/

I would love to do more benchmarking, but sadly, time does not permit me to do so. I just do it for myself, like today, being thrilled I get a solid 75FPS in Quake Gold at 1024x768 on my Win98/GF4 Ti4200/Athlon XP3000. 🤣

Either way, good work, keep it up! 😀

Thanks, I can immediately tell how many hours you've poured into your site. I only skimmed Vogons tonight and it's already late here in the UK, but I’ll have a good read of some of your articles properly tomorrow.
It’s oddly comforting knowing there are others out there spending countless hours crafting blogs and writeups for niche audiences, I wonder how many more of us are quietly doing the same.
I’ll drop a backlink to your site from mine tomorrow, it seems to help a lot with visibility
Congrats on hitting 75fps! I’m wishing I had any GeForce 3 or 4 Ti at this point — they’re getting seriously pricey over here. My AGP collection’s looking is made up of cards that are either crap, or not working

I got lucky and found my GF4Ti in a system donated to me. Needless to say, I was quite happy to have one for Win98 system. They're getting crazy in prices over here as well. 🙁

I look at my silly blog as one of my hobbies. I get to it when I can, and really enjoy doing it. I find it quite relaxing.

I put a link to you on my blog, in the right panel. 😀

DudeFace wrote on 2025-10-02, 11:09:

Nice! :), ive been looking at the 8600gt tests, some years ago when i put together my dual core 775/nvidia 7950gt win98 system, […]
Show full quote

Nice! 😀, ive been looking at the 8600gt tests, some years ago when i put together my dual core 775/nvidia 7950gt win98 system, i installed win 7 to try out a bunch of later DX9 titles.

i was comparing GPU's to see how the 7950gt stacks up against other nvidia gpus, i found the 8600gt is less powerful than a 7900gtx/7950gt, but the 8600gts is more powerful, i figured any games that require an 8600gt that are DX9 should run no problem on a 7900gtx/7950gt, two games i tried were tomb raider 2013 and max payne 3.

tomb raider i got between 40-50fps on the lowest settings, it was just about playable but it looked pretty bad, max payne 3 i was getting a lot of black blotches over the screen which im guessing was down to the fact this game requires a decent amount of VRAM, at first i thought my card was dying, frame rate was somewhere around 30 fps if i remember right.

i'd be interested to see how these games run on an 8600gt especially one with 256mb vram, and find out whether they run any better than a supposedly more powerful 7900gtx/7950gt with twice the VRAM.

Thanks for the comment matey.
I have the 8600gt in the test machine now, I'll test it against the same titles as the HD2600XT.
I do have tomb raiderand I think it's the 2013 version, I'll check and include it in the article - then go back and run it with the Ati card... I'll have to track down a version of max payne 3 though.
Sadly no 7900/7950 's in the collection though I would love to own one.. ebay has a few but their quite pricey, I'll keep an eye out.

I do have a second HD2600XT with 512Mb of RAM so I'll run the same tests with that to demonstrate the difference RAM makes.. I don't think it'll be much until we get into DirectX 10 titles, max resolution on this monitor is 1280x1024 which doesn't help fill the VRAM buffer on earlier titles 😒

Ash515253 wrote on 2025-10-05, 08:46:

Thanks for the comment matey. I have the 8600gt in the test machine now, I'll test it against the same titles as the HD2600XT. […]
Show full quote

DudeFace wrote on 2025-10-02, 11:09:

Nice! :), ive been looking at the 8600gt tests, some years ago when i put together my dual core 775/nvidia 7950gt win98 system, […]
Show full quote

Nice! 😀, ive been looking at the 8600gt tests, some years ago when i put together my dual core 775/nvidia 7950gt win98 system, i installed win 7 to try out a bunch of later DX9 titles.

i was comparing GPU's to see how the 7950gt stacks up against other nvidia gpus, i found the 8600gt is less powerful than a 7900gtx/7950gt, but the 8600gts is more powerful, i figured any games that require an 8600gt that are DX9 should run no problem on a 7900gtx/7950gt, two games i tried were tomb raider 2013 and max payne 3.

tomb raider i got between 40-50fps on the lowest settings, it was just about playable but it looked pretty bad, max payne 3 i was getting a lot of black blotches over the screen which im guessing was down to the fact this game requires a decent amount of VRAM, at first i thought my card was dying, frame rate was somewhere around 30 fps if i remember right.

i'd be interested to see how these games run on an 8600gt especially one with 256mb vram, and find out whether they run any better than a supposedly more powerful 7900gtx/7950gt with twice the VRAM.

Thanks for the comment matey.
I have the 8600gt in the test machine now, I'll test it against the same titles as the HD2600XT.
I do have tomb raiderand I think it's the 2013 version, I'll check and include it in the article - then go back and run it with the Ati card... I'll have to track down a version of max payne 3 though.
Sadly no 7900/7950 's in the collection though I would love to own one.. ebay has a few but their quite pricey, I'll keep an eye out.

I do have a second HD2600XT with 512Mb of RAM so I'll run the same tests with that to demonstrate the difference RAM makes.. I don't think it'll be much until we get into DirectX 10 titles, max resolution on this monitor is 1280x1024 which doesn't help fill the VRAM buffer on earlier titles 😒

i'll look forward to seeing the results 😀 , i just rechecked the minimum requirements and didnt realise it also lists the 2600XT alongside the 8600GT, though it does say 512mb VRAM, it will be interesting to see how well each card performs, especially being the 256mb variants.